After a week of high mileage and plentiful surprises, here is the definitive guide to the storylines and themes of the opening 2020 pre-season Formula 1 test.NAVIGATING THE GAMESMANSHIP

Looking beyond the lap times, Mercedes and Red Bull appear well refined after one week of testing but Ferrari has more to find. However, how much of what we’re seeing is manipulated by smoke and mirrors?

As this fascinating insight from Mercedes told us, lessons can be drawn with “surprising accuracy” in testing. The longer testing runs, the better that accuracy gets because when the race runs start, there are fewer places to hide.

Mercedes is already working through its programme in relatively plain sight. It does not seem to be bluffing to any extreme degree. The car looks sorted, its race runs are good and the driver feedback is promising. And it got one over on its rivals early with the reveal of the DAS system that got everybody talking in week one.

But using what we can of Mercedes’ techniques on what we’ve seen this week allows us to compensate for the gamesmanship that is afoot.

Red Bull is clearly holding back performance and is probably running higher fuel loads. It looks quietly confident and is keeping its cards close to its chest.

Ferrari’s the interesting one because it was so badly burned last year. Obviously its car is not really down with the Haas and Williams. The question is how big a leap in performance is it set to make.

The suggestion is that there’s a serious amount of lap time being held back on the engine side. When it finally launches into race runs next week its rivals will start to see if that’s true by monitoring speed and acceleration traces from GPS data to look for changes in engine power.

That will “dramatically” narrow the error rate in how rival teams estimate Ferrari’s performance, and manipulating the narrative will get harder. – Scott Mitchell

IN THE MEANTIME, RED BULL LOOKS MEGA

If I walk around the Mercedes and Red Bull cars in detail, they make sense. They are logical pieces of kit, plus a whole lot more. I’m very, very impressed with those cars and I think the competition is between those two teams.

If I was to pick a car that looks on track like it’s pretty good, not based on lap times, it’s the Red Bull. Through Turns 1, 2 and 3 it is superb. I went down there to watch when there were five or six cars on track and they are all on their own programmes and the Red Bull arrived and I though ‘wow, that was mega’.

The lap time isn’t there, so is Red Bull sandbagging? Probably. But it looked fantastic. It was total commitment and total responsiveness. Everything the driver asked for, the car did it. And that’s what you want.

I’ve always found that you know within 10 laps where you are. You cannot slow down a quick car, it just flows. A driver just flows with it and bish, bash, bosh there’s a lap time there.

I haven’t seen that from Ferrari. That Red Bull behaviour was what you saw from Ferrari in testing last year, it never went slow. – Gary Anderson

TEAMS ARE MORE EFFICIENT THAN EVER…

Faced with a 25% reduction in running thanks to the cut from eight pre-season days to just six this year, teams have to cram their preparations in less time than ever this year.

Despite the tyre restrictions being the same (effectively 10 sets a day, with the ability to carry over five sets from the first to the second test), that didn’t add up to a 25% reduction in running over the first half of testing.

The 10 teams logged a combined total of 3941 laps over the first three days of running, which amounts to only a 10.3% reduction from that of the first four days of running last year. Even if you disregard Williams, which only managed 88 laps last year thanks to its shambolic start, the reduction is just 16%.

As well as Williams, Racing Point managed to complete more laps in the first half of 2020 testing than it did last year. It completed 123 more laps, underlining how much better-prepared the team is for this season.

There were only five red flags during the three days of running – one each for Alfa Romeo, Haas, Ferrari, Williams and Renault – as reliability proved to be better-than-ever for this stage of the season.

A colossal amount of running on the first day of testing led to suggestions that even this reduction to six days at Barcelona leaves teams with too much time. They did, after all, seem so prepared.

But the fact that Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari all hit trouble over the first week proves that no amount of on-track activity is too much.

Mercedes had an electrical problem (and its customer team Williams also had an engine issue), Red Bull needed an engine change after Honda spotted a data anomaly on the dyno back at Sakura, Ferrari also changed an engine after an undiagnosed problem on the final morning.

These might all prove to be little glitches: the cliched ‘two-quid piece’ breaking and causing a bigger consequence. And it’s worth noting that neither of those teams lost a dramatic amount of mileage as a result. Mercedes was close to 200 laps for the day when Valtteri Bottas was brought into the pits, Alex Albon hit 134 laps and Sebastian Vettel at least reached a ton when he returned to the circuit.

But these are setbacks nonetheless and it proves that none of the big three are infallible. Stable regulations do not mean the big players have taken their foot off the throttle. The stakes are high and the competition is more intense than ever.

For a more specific look at each of these teams’ respective weeks, you should read Edd Straw’s verdict on the 10 contenders later on Saturday. -SM

DAS: F1 TESTING SHOW-STOPPER

Rivals were left wide-eyed on day two of this week’s running when onboard footage of Lewis Hamilton’s car showed the six-time world champion pulling the steering wheel back at the start of a straight and then pushing it back into the normal position before entering the next braking zone.

Mercedes’ dual axis steering system (DAS) brings the front wheels, which usually track slightly outwards for better cornering performance, more parallel on the straights. In theory that has the dual effect of cooling the tyres slightly and giving the car a fraction more slipperiness in a straightline.

The FIA’s sporting regulations state that teams must supply a suspension set-up sheet for its cars before qualifying begins. According to Mercedes’ rivals, whether the influence the DAS has on the front wheels related to a steering or suspension set-up could be the key detail here.

But so far it appears to be considered legal and safe, and Ferrari has indicated it would accept the FIA saying it can stay. It will be fascinating to see if it is used in Australia, if anyone protests, or anyone tries to copy.

Looking further ahead, it appears the DAS will be a one-season wonder. The FIA’s 2021 rulebook already has an additional paragraph in the technical regulations relating to steering that seems to outlaw such a device.

Mercedes technical director James Allison said he had no major fears about the device’s legality because it has been discussed with the FIA for some time.

Those discussions may well be why the 2021 rules have been tweaked so specifically. -SM

2020 MONSTERS WILL NOT BE BEATEN FOR YEARS

It’s an inexact science comparing last year’s Barcelona test times to this year’s but given the times we have already seen, there seems little doubt that Bottas’s 2019 pole position time of 1m15.406s will be bettered by the end of testing.

Regardless of the unchanged regulations and tyres, the teams are forever finding performance. It’s quite conceivable that the sleek new Mercedes W11 is around 1s faster than its predecessor around this track. As such, given that the radically new 2021 regulations are expected to result in cars between 5-6s per lap slower, the class of 2020 look set to be the fastest F1 cars we’ll see into the foreseeable future.

Highly prescriptive aerodynamic regulations for 2021-on define the bodywork much more tightly than is currently the case. This has been done in the interests of giving the car a friendly wake to the car behind so that they might more easily be able to race closely.

However, those body and wing profiles by definition will be producing considerably less downforce than the current cars, even though that has not been the primary intention.

Although Ross Brawn believes that by the time the teams have had a chance to work on them, the 2021 cars will only be around 3s per lap slower, the consensus among the teams currently is that it could be more like 5-6s.

The major limiting performance factor as things stand is that the front wing cannot generate anything like enough downforce to give the car a balance that would allow it to use the rear downforce created by the underfloor and rear wing.

It is always possible that one or more teams finds a breakthrough loophole that will allow it to overcome that major performance obstacle but even if they do, Brawn has strongly suggested such loopholes will be quickly closed up.

There is then the complicating factor of the budget caps in force from ’21. If a team’s first iteration of bodywork proves slow, a major corrective development programme could conceivably take it beyond the regulation budget threshold. Such headaches for the teams, Liberty and the FIA lie in the future – but the near-future.

In the meantime, the current monsters of downforce look set to obliterate existing lap records and leave them indelibly stamped in the history books for many years to come. – Mark Hughes

EVERYONE CAN WIN THE MIDFIELD BATTLE

Obviously, only one team can finish fourth in the constructors’ championship and be crowned king of the midfield, but right now there’s a clutch of teams with the means, opportunity and objectives – stated or otherwise – of being at the top of that pile. Assuming, of course, Ferrari doesn’t get sucked into that battle, which would be a surprise.

Racing Point has set its sights on fourth place, and a better fourth place than it has managed before. Considering how strong its 2017 season was, that’s the loftiest possible goal for a team in its current position. McLaren, too, will be gunning for the same after its strong season last year.

Renault is playing it coy and downplaying expectations having been bitten last year, but given the pressure to succeed you can be sure that internally fourth place is the target in mind. It has the resources and the driver line-up to deliver on that, and it has taken an aggressive approach with the transformed front-end concept of its car as it tackles the limitations of last year’s machine.

Then there’s AlphaTauri, which team principal Franz Tost has emphatically said is gunning for fifth place. This would be its best-ever season, and while it was only six points behind Renault last year fifth is a lofty goal for a team of its size, even with Red Bull assistance.

So that’s four teams that need to be squeezed into two positions. On top of that, there’s also a Haas team that was fourth fastest in 2018 and spent the test conducting rigorous tests for hint of the aerodynamic problem that ruined last season. So if it has solved that problem, it could also be in the mix.

Then there’s upwardly-mobile Alfa Romeo, which actually set the best outright lap time of the midfield pack in the test (for what that’s worth).

It’s hard to throw Williams into that mix, but its car is a significant step forward and while it’s likely to be around the lower reaches of that pack it can at least aspire to be in the mix and going racing.
There’s going to be some big winners – and big losers – in this part of the field in 2020. And the margins could prove to be tiny. – ES

CLONING REACHES A NEW LEVEL

The ‘Pink Mercedes’ that was revealed on the first day of testing put Racing Point in the spotlight as people accused it of copying last year’s W10. Which is exactly what it did, and Racing Point is proud of it.

Racing Point (mainly in its former guise of Force India) has been among the fiercest critics of how closely Haas replicated Ferrari designs, over the last two years in particular. But that was based on an unproven belief that Haas/Ferrari might be sharing data, which is not allowed.

What Racing Point says it has done with Mercedes is looked at what last year’s title-winning W10 had on the surface and committing its own resources to tearing up the higher-rake concept it has persevered with for years in order to try to replicate Mercedes’ design.

Previously, Racing Point was trying to align the development of its own concept with physical architecture from Mercedes (the gearbox and therefore rear suspension pick-up points) that was designed around another philosophy. Force India could not just throw its own work out the window before because it was always cash-strapped. As Racing Point it has more resource, so it has been able to pursue the Mercedes direction.

Alliances between big F1 teams and their smaller rivals have become more commonplace in recent years, but in different ways. Red Bull/Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) was through ownership.

Ferrari/Haas was through listed parts and an engine supply. Mercedes/Racing Point was previously through the gearbox and some suspension components.

This has been a sensible approach while F1 costs are so high. A combination of success with the concept, increased resource and other circumstances (e.g. Red Bull/Toro Rosso using the same engine again) has then helped make it more prominent.

So some people think F1 is experiencing the attack of the clones when in reality, it’s just good sense. – SM

RENAULT’S DRIVER LINE-UP WORKS…FOR NOW

The arrival of the highly-rated and rapid Esteban Ocon at Renault to partner established team leader Daniel Ricciardo makes for a combustible partnership. The battle for supremacy within the team has rightly been talked up as one of the potential big rivalries of the season.

But during their first three days as team-mates on track, there was also evidence that the duo also have the potential to work very effectively as a pair. While all drivers want broadly the same characteristics from a car, they have similar classical, smooth driving styles that should ensure the team isn’t chasing different balances for both.

“We are pushing in the same direction as Daniel, which is good because we have the same comments,” said Ocon after his running was complete.

“It’s early days, so we have to see how Daniel drives but so far from the first data it looks very comparable, I have to say. There are a few different things that we do, which is normal, but I look forward to seeing more of his driving, more of what he does, more of how he works.

“He’s experienced and it’s very important to me, especially at this time of year, to learn against him.”

As ever in F1, the question is whether the compatibility and underlying desire of each to assert themselves over the other proves to be a driving force for the team or counter-productive. Right now, it’s the former, but it always was going to be in the ‘honeymoon’ period.
Whatever happens, Renault has got an outstanding driver line-up. – ES

PIRELLI HAS A NEW 2020 TYRE AFTER ALL

One of the late controversies of last season was all the development work Pirelli did for its 2020 tyres being binned because teams wanted to continue with the 2019 compounds.

In reality, the research of last season will be applied as Pirelli continues its as-yet unsuccessful bid to create a tyre that satisfies the F1 paddock. But it did mean that the tyres were a known quantity at the start of testing for once.

Pirelli has not just abandoned 2020, though. It has a new tyre for this year after all.

Next week, Pirelli will bring a prototype front tyre that could be used at the revived Dutch Grand Prix if Zandvoort’s aggressive new banked final corner is too much for the current spec of tyre with higher tyre pressures. Teams will have two sets of the C2 compound to use although only the front is different.

Mercedes was the undoubted ‘winner’ of the first pre-season test. While that’s worth very little in itself, the fact it set the fastest time by over a second, was quickest on the long runs, completed more laps than anyone else and got tongues wagging by trialling its dual-axis steering system does emphatically underline the fact that F1’s pre-eminent team hasn’t dropped the ball. Save for an electrical problem curtailing Bottas’s afternoon on day two, there were no obvious significant problems.

Valtteri Bottas reported that the car has made gains in key areas compared to last year, in particular with a boost in rear stability. Perhaps this could help improve the biggest relative weakness of last year’s car – qualifying pace.

That said, the power unit development battle could also help. Not only has Mercedes AMG HPP continued to chip away with improvements in the seventh year of the 1.6-litre V6 turbo hybrid engines, but the introduction of a second – blind for the teams – fuel-flow sensor is also regarded as a welcome addition.FERRARI

From Sebastian Vettel aborting his first day of testing because of the flu to Sebastian Vettel aborting his broken-down car two days later, the first week at Barcelona was not a smooth one for Ferrari.

Things are not as dramatically bad as they look but the overriding feeling was that the Ferrari camp’s not entirely satisfied with its work so far. It is being more methodical with its programme, and not prioritising outright performance work like it did a year ago, after going so quickly in pre-season testing of 2019 backfired so spectacularly in Australia and beyond.

Ferrari does not want to look quick right now. But it might like to be a bit quicker than it is.

Ferrari has tried to add significant downforce to its car for 2020 and says that has been achieved in the wind tunnel. The early feedback from its drivers suggests there is a positive difference here. It also wanted to widen the car’s performance window and spent the first three days of testing trying various set-up extremes to test this. That, apparently, got another tick.

Ferrari is clearly capable of lapping faster than 13th, 2.6seconds off the pace, with much stronger long-run pace in evidence, and is yet to use the softest compound tyres. It is also only one of three teams yet to lap sub-1m18s.

Fuel loads and engine modes are almost certainly clouding the picture we can see but the team insists it was more optimistic at this stage one year ago. There is still time to improve, and that is what Ferrari needs to do.RED BULL

The Red Bull certainly impressed all who saw it with its poise on the circuit, and the feeling within the team is positive. But it has yet to show the kind of pace Mercedes has on short or long runs so it’s still difficult to be sure where it might shake out in the order. Right now, the numbers suggest it’s more thereabouts than there, but with more to come at the second test the car’s performance there will be monitored with great interest given the potential of the team.

But the drivers believe the car is a little easier to work with than the 2019 car, suggesting that there is more to come relative to Mercedes. Whether it’s enough to challenge is the big question, but the feeling is it’s a car that could prove to be more of an all-rounder having sometimes struggled to match Mercedes in quicker corners for sheer aero load.

“I’d definitely say it’s more usable,” said Alex Albon. “It feels nicer to drive, it really does. There are always areas last year where we felt the car was a little bit weak in some places. Max and I have similar feedback comments so it was clear the direction we wanted to go in and the car definitely feels better. So we’ve made a step forward.”

How much of a step forward won’t be clear until at least next week.McLAREN

McLaren started the test with what Carlos Sainz Jr called a “very basic car”, although did phase in some new parts as the test progressed, culminating in trialling a new front wing on the final morning. But the unobtrusive position on the overall timesheets belies a team that’s revelling in the smoothest start to pre-season testing for a long time.

With an upgrade package also slated for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, McLaren appears to have built a solid foundation in this test.

“I’m really, really happy with how it went,” said team principal Andreas Seidl. “First of all if you look at the number of laps and reliability we have shown it’s by far the best start for many, many years. In terms of programme and test points I’m also very happy we could tick a lot of boxes already on our job list.

“Without having reliability topics we could go through the run plan every day. We focus on ourselves, we don’t focus on lap times and we continuously bring new parts to the car as well with late deliveries from the factory. It’s great to see this momentum we are having. So far the car is doing what we expect from it so it’s great to see this correlation.”

RENAULT

The Renault was arguably the most attention-grabbing car with its narrow, rounded nose shape as part of a comprehensive overhaul of the front-end concept. That was the right area to work on given it was the fundamental limitation of the 2019 car and this meant the team struggled to find performance improvements as the season progressed.

The headline time – third fastest of all the teams – was positive but the pre-season vibe about Renault is all about managing expectations. The car has certainly improved, as has everyone, but much will depend on whether there’s a big enough step in the overall downforce generated – and its consistency, which will only start to become apparent next week.

A solid start with nothing too much to worry about, or get too excited about so far.ALPHATAURI

Given the AlphaTauri features so many 2019 Red Bull parts, it’s to be expected that it should run reliably and the car appeared to work within expectations from the start of running. The team ran through its programme unobtrusively in the midfield, setting the fifth-fastest time to put it bang in the right place to achieve its constructors’ championship target – were the peak times to mean anything, of course.

Despite claims to the contrary, the 2020 AlphaTauri is not simply a ’19 Red Bull. There are clear divergences in aero and front suspension approach but the common components inevitably mean there are also areas where the concepts converge. Having improved last year in the way it deploys upgrades, understanding the more gradually-phased-in components well and become a more consistent – if still occasionally erratic – force in the midfield there was nothing from the first test to suggest it can’t build on that.

It appears to be thereabouts in the midfield, but beyond that, it’s difficult to judge.

RACING POINT

The ‘Pink Mercedes’, as it was dubbed, was a bit talking point when the Racing Point RP20 finally broke cover on the first morning of the test. The resemblance to the 2019 Mercedes was unmistakable, although those who claim it is identical are stretching the point as there are differences.

But what the team hopes it will allow it to do, despite the inherent risk of switching to what is a very different concept to last year’s car in particular thanks to having to drop the high-rake approach. But if it works, the Racing Point could start very strongly, something the lap times during testing hinted could be very possible, score heavily early on and continue to be competitive without having to invest too heavily in ongoing 2020 development. With the ’21 car in the works, to achieve that while taking fourth in the championship would be a triumph for the Silverstone-based team.

The fact it had a strong first test, particularly having struggled for mileage at the same time last year, means Racing Point’s first ‘real’ year having recovered from the financial troubles of 2018 could be very successful.

ALFA ROMEO

The Sauber-run Alfa Romeo team set the fastest time of any of the midfield runners – slower only than Mercedes – courtesy of Kimi Raikkonen’s day-two pace. That was a representative time and given the very different approaches taken by others, it would be a mistake to get too carried away for a team that still looks to have a little way to go to be a consistent threat at the front of the midfield.

If we have probably seen something approximating what the Alfa Romeo can do already, then it will need to take a step by Melbourne with a car that it hasn’t yet got on top of getting the best out of even by pre-season testing standards.

HAAS

The Haas was slowest, racked up the least mileage and only really caught the attention when Kevin Magnussen spun into the wall on the final day. This was thanks to a puncture caused by wheel rim damage, itself the consequence of a broken spacer.

The relatively low mileage is a negative, but the lack of pace is less of a concern given the priorities for Haas in this test. Last year’s terrible season was the consequence of an aerodynamic problem that didn’t show up in the cooler conditions of Barcelona pre-season and Melbourne, so Haas has focused rigorously on interrogating its aerodynamic performance. According to chief designer Rob Taylor, “we’re doing a lot more homework than we would normally have done” aerodynamically to ensure the understanding and correlation is there to be sure it has solved its problem.

This is all well and good and to work through that in the first test is exactly the correct priority. But Haas will have to start to show some pace next week if it’s to confirm it can be back in the thick of the midfield fight at the front as it was in 2018.

WILLIAMS

No team has made a bigger improvement compared to this time last year than Williams, but given it missed the start of testing last year and produced the worst car the team has built-in its history that’s not a surprise. But right from the first moment George Russell first took the car out on Wednesday it was clear that the new FW43 is a very different beast to its predecessor in terms of on-track behaviour.

The question is how much. Russell was confident that Williams can at least go racing last year having spent last season mostly driving around off the back of the midfield, while head of vehicle performance Dave Robson was cautiously optimistic.

“It’s quite a lot better,” he said of the car. “But the whole sport is a race so while we might be better than in December, it doesn’t mean that much if everyone else has moved on. But the drivers are happy. Conditions are very favourable, which probably make the comparison a bit harder, but the car is promising.”

There’s nothing to say that promises stretches to beyond being at the back of the midfield back, but at least it’s not miles off it as it was last year.

Mercedes has made a “really impressive” engine step and developed a Formula 1 car that is “streaks ahead” in terms of downforce from 2019, according to technical director James Allison.

The team’s High Performance Powertrains division was responsible for the significant advantage Mercedes enjoyed at the start of the V6 turbo-hybrid era in 2014.

However, its rivals have gradually caught up and last year Ferrari established a clear, albeit controversial, edge in engine performance.

In a video explaining the differences in its 2020 car, the W11, Allison said: “A huge, huge effort has gone in by HPP to put more performance into the engine.

“They have managed to have a really good winter, finding lots and lots of fresh horses from this power unit, many years into a regulation with fixed fuel flow.

“This year, they have managed to find a really impressive upgrade in the power.

“[It is] not just more horsepower. They have also for the third year straight bent over backwards to give us a power unit that gives opportunities on the chassis side to develop better aerodynamics.”

Mercedes HPP boss Andy Cowell had already outlined at the launch of the W11 how much effort had gone in to improving the engine’s temperature tolerance for 2020.

Its cooling package suffered from a miscalculation last year that meant its radiators were slightly too small, but HPP has developed its coolants which means the radiators have not needed to be dramatically increased.

Allison said: “Being able to run hotter means that for the same everything else, we can make smaller radiators in the car and keep the car cool.

“[It is] one of the reasons why this car is even slimmer than the ones that we have seen in previous seasons.
“Last year’s chassis would have stuck way out the side of this bodywork, but this year’s one is narrower still, as a result of the investments that HPP made on our behalf in their power unit.”

When Mercedes revealed its W11, the team made reference to three significant changes across the front, middle and rear of the car.

These chiefly related to the greater structural complexity around the uprights and wheel rims, lowering the side-impact tubes and what it called an “adventurous” rear suspension layout.

Allison said these investments combined to make a car that is “streaks ahead” in terms of downforce and should have a stronger development curve as well.

“We’ve got a car here that we hope will be fertile ground to develop strongly all the way through the 2020 season,” he added.

Allison said that Mercedes was tempted to be more conservative but, under pressure from Red Bull and Ferrari as 2019 developed, opted to be more “aggressive”.

Elaborating on the changes outlined at the W11’s reveal, Allison said strengthening the front of the car was “a difficult project but one which has given us good aerodynamic gains”.

He also explained that Mercedes had opted to follow the pitlane trend of lowering the side impact structure after “watching on from afar” because there was a further aerodynamic gain to be made.

Finally, addressing the “extremely adventurous” rear suspension, he said: “We have put into the back, specifically on the lower rear wishbone, a new geometry that gives us more aerodynamic opportunity and allows us to get more downforce on the car.

“Nearly all of them [the fundamental changes outlined above] are a structural compromise where we have had to put weight on the front, in the middle and at the back of the car in order to realise these gains.

“That weight has had to be paid for by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of small innovations by other designers who have managed to save the weight that’s allowed us to buy each of these investments.”

This is the second year of Formula 1’s new front wing regulations, which were introduced at the start of 2019 to reduce the outwash off the front wing endplate and therefore reduce the turbulent wake that made it difficult for one car to follow another.

This proved to be a waste of time, but it resulted in wings that looked much tidied and produced two significantly different concepts that have continued to evolve this year.

Mercedes started the season with what we called the ‘loaded outboard’ concept. In other words, there was quite a lot of wing angle on the flaps towards the outboard end working as a proper downforce-generating wing in this area.

Ferrari, by contrast, went for the ‘loaded inboard’ concept where the wing drops away more to allow more airflow between the front wing endplate and the outside of the front tyre.

We wondered who would be proved right, but there was also the suspicion that the designs would converge this year. While they have, to a certain extent, there are still clear differences.

Ferrari has been pretty stubborn over changing its concept, while Mercedes has changed a bit and dropped the outboard end down very slightly but nothing dramatic. There will be a nice compromise in there somewhere.

But there is another factor because as you change the angle of the front wheels, you’re changing how the wing works. So you can change the front downforce characteristics by applying steering lock.

By turning the wheel, you’re effectively opening up both sides of the wing so the efficiency will increase as you increase the steering lock.

This is a good characteristic, normally the car will be set-up with a touch of understeer in fast corners – which gives the driver confidence – and then you can move the aerodynamic centre of pressure forward for slower corners (where you have most steering lock) where these cars normally understeer more. But this can make the front wings more pitch sensitive.

To understand in detail the different front wing configurations, we can compare the approach of the three big teams – Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull – as well as looking at the designs of McLaren and Alfa Romeo. The labelling of the various areas helps us to compare the different approaches.Mercedes

The height of the endplate is represented by (A), which is a maximum height of 225mm measured 75mm up from the ‘reference plane’, which is the bottom of the chassis. All of the teams have it as big as possible because there’s an advertising campaign going on with the endplates, never mind a technical one. Then we have the gap underneath the wing (B). The gap from the top of the endplate to the top flap is denoted by (C).

That leaves you with (D), which is the front wing chord profile in that area so that’s the amount of front wing you’ve got at that outboard end. Last year, Mercedes won both World Championships, so we have to say that’s a pretty good solution.Ferrari

The Ferrari configuration is a little different. The height (A) is the same but (B) is narrower so the outboard end of the front wing is a little lower to the ground. Most significantly, the difference between the height of the endplate and the top flap (C) is substantially bigger than on the Mercedes. This allows more air to come around the front tyre.

That leaves you with (D), which is a smaller wing section so the Ferrari will not produce the same amount of downforce as a Mercedes. But it will be less sensitive to steering lock.

What can happen here is that the outboard end of the front wing, being closer to the ground, can almost touch the ground when the car rolls in the fast corners. Because that part of the wing is close to the ground, the ground effect principle kicks in to a greater degree instead of it being a wing working in free standing airflow.

The airspeed increases through this ever-diminishing gap until it just can’t travel any faster and when that happens some part of the wing will suffer an aerodynamic stall. It could be the mainplane or one of the other flaps – that is what defines the positioning and size of the slot gaps, also the flap angles
When this happens the wing loses downforce meaning the car loses front grip. If this stall is too dramatic – i.e. it loses too large a percentage of the front downforce – the car will start porpoising, with the front of the car bouncing up and down. This can also effect the car under braking.

The trick is to just stall the wing enough so that at some point the front wing downforce doesn’t increase as much as the rear does. That means that the rear of the car will feel more stable in the middle of fast corners.

There are two ways of fixing that. Mercedes has the wing a little higher to allow more airflow underneath, so you can then work the flaps a bit harder. Ferrari has the lower wing but has backed off the flap to reduce the stall of the wing by not working it as hard.

But Ferrari gets less change in the downforce with steering lock and therefore doesn’t get a front-grip gain because it isn’t opening up as aggressive a piece of wing. As a result, if you had two identical cars other than this and the balance was the same in fast corners then the Ferrari will have more understeer in slow corners.Red Bull

The Red Bull front wing is closer to the Mercedes concept but probably even more aggressive. The space underneath the wing (B) is very similar and Red Bull sweeps the outboard end of the wing up gradually so the pitch sensitivity is absent in the high-speed corners.

The gap from the top of the endplate to the uppermost flap (C) is smaller than on the Mercedes, so Red Bull has more wing in that position. That leaves us with a more aggressive piece of wing (D) but because the height (B) is quite big the car won’t be too pitch sensitive in the high speed corners.

Then because (D) is quite big, when you turn the steering wheel you get more downforce by working the wing harder. So this is perhaps an even better solution than the Mercedes.Alfa Romeo

If I was to pick the worst front wing design, it would be the Alfa Romeo. Like last year, it’s following the Ferrari approach but even more so. The gap from the wing to the ground (B) is very small so it will be very pitch sensitive.

To counterbalance that, Alfa has dropped the top of the flap at the outboard end so that (D) – the wing area there – is almost zero. So in the low-speed corners, Alfa has no change of downforce to help with the understeer.McLaren

The McLaren is a little different to the other teams in that it doesn’t raise the mainplane of the front wing up from the bottom of the endplate as much as its rivals. This instead happens a little later, I’d say it’s too late.

You can also see a couple of splitters underneath the front wing from this angle and this is to effectively ‘compartmentalise’ the wings so that whenever that outer part stalls because the airflow can’t get underneath it, the same doesn’t happen to the rest of the wing. If you get a stall on the wing, it will spread, so it’s a good idea to box it off. Everyone will have the maximum allowed two splitters under the wing.

The McLaren front wing extreme outboard end looks too close to the ground (B). There is a compromise to be found but the result is that the gap from the top of the endplate to the top of the wing (C) needs to be increased, resulting in a smaller wing section (D). What McLaren has doesn’t seem the right compromise to me.Inboard end comparison

On each front wing photo above, the inboard ends have been circled in red. You are allowed five elements maximum and on the Mercedes you can see there is the mainplane, which is continuous, the flaps drop away slightly and then on the fourth flap up there’s a small slot gap in the end of it. That’s there to keep the airflow attached to the surface underneath it because it’s working a bit too hard. But that means you can’t run the fifth flap all the way across.

On the Ferrari, this is used more as an endplate. Ferrari is dissipating the vortex generation because you have a low pressure underneath each flap and a high pressure above, where those two meet up you get a big vortex.

We used to talk about the Y250 vortex – created by the transition of the FIA-mandated neutral central section of the mainplane 125mm each side of the centre point of the wing – as critical in the past, but that doesn’t really do much anymore so you want to dissipate it. The Ferrari solution therefore reduces the drag from the front wing.

The Red Bull is similar to the Ferrari but the difference is that the first and second flap is actually part of the mainplane. So it has two flaps as one with a slot gap, whereas the rest have a mainplane then the flaps. Red Bull is working the wing harder, but reducing the vortex by dropping it down aggressively – which is a tidy solution.

The McLaren is the same approach as the Red Bull and the Alfa Romeo is similar to Ferrari.
So it’s all about the compromise. The Mercedes solution gives you more downforce with steering lock, which is a positive for low-speed corners and Ferrari doesn’t have that. The Red Bull and Mercedes approaches seem the most effective, but Ferrari just doesn’t seem to have moved with the times.

The Mercedes or Red Bull concept with 9 degrees of steering lock, so a tight corner, you might gain 5-10% of overall downforce compared to Ferrari gaining nothing. That’s a big difference.
It’s all about the centre of pressure, which let’s say is 40% front, 60% rear when going down the straight. When you get to a corner you turn the wheel say three degrees for a high-speed corner and you want that to stay stable but if anything move back a bit. If you could make it 39-61% you’d be very happy.

With six degrees steering lock for a medium-speed corner you want it to move forward more, say to 41-59% then for nine degrees you would want it more like 41.5-58.5% Managing this can give you a big gain in balance, particularly for the slower corners.

Although the front wing designs have converged slightly this year, there’s still a big difference in the concepts. But there are a lot of factors at play here, and overall the best compromise appears to lie with the Mercedes team that has won the last six World Championship doubles. The team that might challenge it, Red Bull, has taken a very similar and perhaps even more aggressive approach in its bid to overturn its long-term rival.